Autorenbild.

Ibrahim al-Koni

Autor von Lenos Pocket, Nr.49, Goldstaub

36+ Werke 378 Mitglieder 14 Rezensionen Lieblingsautor von 1 Lesern

Über den Autor

Born in 1948 to a nomadic Saharan family, Ibrahim Al-Koni is an award-winning Arabic-language novelist and has already published more than seventy volumes. A Tuareg whose mother tongue is Tamasheq, he was educated in Moscow and, after many years in Switzerland, now lives in Spain. He is one of the mehr anzeigen prime authorities on Tuareg culture and folklore. William M. Hutchins, Professor in the Philosophy and Religion Department at Appalachian State University, has translated numerous works of Arabic literature into English, including four novels by the Nobel Prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for literary translation, both for works by Ibrahim al-Koni. He was co-winner of the 2013 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for A Land Without Jasmine by Wajdi al-Ahdal. weniger anzeigen
Bildnachweis: Ibrahim al-Koni

Reihen

Werke von Ibrahim al-Koni

Lenos Pocket, Nr.49, Goldstaub (1990) — Autor — 94 Exemplare
Die Magier. Das Epos der Tuareg (2002) 52 Exemplare
The Seven Veils of Seth (2003) 28 Exemplare
The Fetishists (2018) 9 Exemplare
Yaʻqūb wa-abnāʼuh (2007) 4 Exemplare
al-Waram (2008) 3 Exemplare
Myth and Landscape (2015) 3 Exemplare

Zugehörige Werke

The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction (2006) — Mitwirkender — 102 Exemplare
Under the Naked Sky: Short Stories from the Arab World (2000) — Mitwirkender — 27 Exemplare
Arabic Short Stories (1983) — Mitwirkender — 21 Exemplare

Getagged

Wissenswertes

Mitglieder

Rezensionen

A completely and totally different work than New Waw, which was the first book of his that I read. That book was dense, not easy to follow (for me), and a genuine challenge—although I enjoyed it a great deal. Symbolic, mythic, indirect…and compelling. This one, however, is apparently his first book and it reads like a very straightforward, easy-to-read, story. The story weaves elements of nomadic life in the remote deserts of Libya with Sufism, mysticism, traditional beliefs, as well as environmental issues. As someone on goodreads wrote, al-Koni argues that “the natural world and humans share a common soul; and that in destroying the natural world we destroy ourselves. Al-Koni creates this common soul by depicting a world in which the boundary between nature and humans is porous.” Accurate, I think. But for a thin volume, he manages to provide a great deal of food for thought. If you’ve never read al-Koni before, this is a good entry point.… (mehr)
½
 
Gekennzeichnet
Gypsy_Boy | 5 weitere Rezensionen | Aug 24, 2023 |
The story suffers from an often awkward translation, but in itself is epic. Love, hate, death, the will of the spirits, the stubbornness of man all take their place as is normal in these tales.
½
 
Gekennzeichnet
TomMcGreevy | Mar 10, 2023 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
At the heart of the novel is a fundamental (insufficiently established) assumption. Deep into the novel it lingered…unanswered…. indeed, it remained a prohibitive question. A good example of why translated fiction must overcome a higher literary threshold.

a note to the editors: a book like this, because it is so atypical of the culture it bespeaks, may require a cultural note or disclaimer, for example, that the book is set in an 'isolated' 'nomadic' community not representative of the wider region of origin; or that it is entirely fictional etc. The current formal translation of that community is "Berber" in English. Arabic, the language from which it is translated recognizes that label as derogatory, that information is essential to an accurate understanding of the story. The only such indication available in the 2020 edition is The Independent's endorsement quote comparing the work to McCarthy, who's Blood Meridian includes graphic, some would say, gratuitous violence, a discernment the average international reader should not be expected to make, it's too wide a gap to bridge without the translator's guidance.… (mehr)
 
Gekennzeichnet
AAAO | 3 weitere Rezensionen | Mar 21, 2020 |
A fascinating window into Tuareg life through the story of a young man, Ukhayyad, and his bonding with his piebald Mahri camel--a dappled thoroughbred. Often the camel acts as though he is human in a camel's body, expressing emotions and reactions to events. Ukhayyad, for marriage to a woman not of his father's choice--is exiled from the tribe and wanders the desert. He has several horrific experiences--dragged behind the camel, and falling into a well from which the camel rescues him; in this case, he hovers between life and death and sees paradise, before returning to earth. He leads a life of ease at an oasis and is convinced by a cousin [?] of his wife's into divorcing her and giving her and his son up. The man, Dudu, pays him a handful of gold dust. He later comes to his senses, murders the man and tosses the gold dust away. He settles in the green pastures of a valley; his camel recovers his looks and strength. However kinsmen of Dudu chase after Ukhayyad, not for revenge on him, but to kill him and to claim any gold and riches Dudu may have left.

"…when the man [Dudu] died, all his riches would fall into the hands of these cowards. That is the way of this world. They would not sleep a single night until they had torn him limb from limb and blotted him out for good. Flecks of gold dust was all they desired. That vile gold dust. It was the cause of everything that happened. It was gold dust that murdered Dudu, not Ukhayyad. But was there anyone same enough to understand this?"

Ukhayyad flees into a cave with crude prehistoric drawings of a hunt on the walls. Many times in the nights that follow, he has a dream of a ruined house and a shadowy form. Is this an omen? Of what?

I really couldn't get close to Umayyad--maybe he was too different culturally from me? The Sufi philosophy of Sheikh Musa was often over my head. As the translator said in his Notes, even Arabs are not familiar with that nomadic culture of these blue-veiled men. A Tuareg appears on the cover of my copy of the novel. The strength of the novel was that the harsh desert came before my eyes through the author's vivid descriptions. No time period was specified, but from the vague hints--Italians fighting in Africa and description of the ruins of an Ottoman building--I am assuming the novel was set sometime during World War II.

Recommended as an introduction to this author's works as this is less than 200 pp. long. A Tuareg himself, Mr. al-Koni wrote in Arabic, rather than in their language, Tamasheq.
… (mehr)
½
 
Gekennzeichnet
janerawoof | 3 weitere Rezensionen | Mar 21, 2019 |

Listen

Auszeichnungen

Dir gefällt vielleicht auch

Nahestehende Autoren

Ghassan Kanafani Contributor
Edwar Al-Charrat Contributor
Asmi Bischara Contributor
Alaa Al-Aswani Contributor
Abdalrachman Munif Contributor
Doris Kilias Übersetzer
Hartmut Fähndrich Übersetzer
Kristina Stock Übersetzer
Regina Karachouli Übersetzer
Petra Becker Übersetzer
Elliott Colla Translator
Ellan Wulff Translator

Statistikseite

Werke
36
Auch von
3
Mitglieder
378
Beliebtheit
#63,851
Bewertung
½ 3.5
Rezensionen
14
ISBNs
74
Sprachen
9
Favoriten
1

Diagramme & Grafiken